It took almost two YEARS for me to grow to 3,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. Two years. I’ve had slow and steady growth over the past couple of years, but it’s been such a great journey so far.
I first want to share that I’ve made a LOT of MISTAKES. There are things I wish I was doing sooner that I think would have grown my YouTube channel way faster.
Here are the top 3 things I wish I had focused on SOONER to make my channel grow even faster. Tune in here:
Being consistent.
I posted a new video on my YouTube channel nearly every week for about a year… then took about a 5 month break. My photography business was booming. And, to be totally honest, I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go with education… so I put it on hold.
In hindsight, I wish I had kept making some videos, even if it was only once every two weeks or once a month… it would have helped to keep my channel growing. But at the time, I didn’t have the time or a team to help me keep it going. Frankly, it just wasn’t a priority at that time!
If you look at my analytics, I was consistently gaining 200+ subscribers per month and it was growing every month… however, when I took my 5 month break, it went down to <150 new subscribers per month. I credit ANY growth and new subscribers that happened to videos that I had targeted specific keywords for and were still being found in search! Now that I’ve been back on YouTube for a couple months, I’m back to gaining well over 200 new subscribers per month, and growing!
Use keywords that can be easily found in search.
My FAVORITE app of all time to do this with is TubeBuddy. You can actually search certain keywords within TubeBuddy using their “Keyword Explorer”. Then, it will tell you how easily a video you make could be found in that search, based on your channel’s analytics. Cool, right?! This makes it super easy to find out what kinds of video topics and keywords will ACTUALLY get your videos found.
I think this is the top reason why my channel continued to grow at all while I was not posting for 5 months… because I had a lot of videos being found in search by using great keywords!
If you want to take this a step further, search for great keywords based on your niche BEFORE you create your video content. Plan out video topics based on topic ideas that will get easily found!
Video quality MATTERS.
Oooooh man, I wish this was something I had focused on WAY more in the beginning. When I say this, I don’t mean I should have gone out and invested high $$$ in equipment… Instead, what I mean is I wish I had researched more on what the best lighting is for long-form video content and HOW to use the mic I bought.
Audio matters more than the actual video, even though both should be as great as possible! I paid $250 for a fancy mic and didn’t know how to use it… I realized later that a quick search ON YouTube could help. It would give me dozens of videos showing me the best settings on my camera and on my mic for great audio. Many of my old videos had an awful hissing and white noise, that I would *attempt* to fix when I was editing… the best audio is the audio straight out of camera. Tweaking a few simple settings would have fixed this altogether!
As for the video quality, I was a professional photographer full time… so I figured, of COURSE I know how to use my camera for video! Wow, I was so WRONG. Video is a whole different ballgame and the way you set your manual camera settings is completely different, as well as the best light for long form videos.
If you’re wondering, okay, so WHAT kinds of gear and tools do you need? If you want to get started in making video content, check out these posts. They’ll show you how I make my video content:
Tools and equipment for making videos
And if you haven’t yet, be sure to grab my FREE download, The Ultimate Guide to DIY YouTube & IGTV Videos:
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